Sunday, June 29, 2014

I'm coming to you today with a sweet little freebie inspired by my 9th grade gym teacher. He had a chalkboard with the saying "Put Ups Only". That little quote has stuck with me forever and ever! It really irks me when my school kids and my home kids use unkind words.

I am always looking to cutify (yup that's a new word) my room and

inspirational quotes are all the rage these days.

So I jumped on the train with a one way ticket to Positiveville!

I hope these visual reminders help your students (and mine) to be positive and kind people!!

Tuesday, June 24, 2014

Hey Everyone! I hope your summer is off to a great start! For those of you who are still in school...hang in there - it's almost summer :)

A bit ago, I shared these notecards of my blog. I printed out a stack to have on hand for a quick thank you note to send home. You know, for when you get a fancy new Rainbow Loom bracelet, questionable baked good or even a Starbucks gift card :)

All you need to do is print these little goodies onto cardstock and thank those little sweeties for their generous treasures!

Check out the picture below to see how to print multiple copies onto a single page.

If you're too lazy to handwrite notes {guilty!} you can also save the images above to your computer and slide into a Power Point presentation. You can then drop a text box on top of the image, type your message and print!

Want to learn some other Life Hacks for Busy Teachers? Head over to my blog for a post FILLED with shortcuts!

Is anyone going to Vegas? I CAN NOT wait! I'll be there all week for the SDE conference, as well as the TpT conference as well! Looking forward to meeting everyone!

Sunday, June 22, 2014

Hi there, Renee here from Fantastic First Grade Froggies. Here in California we are on summer vacation and I am loving it. I love spending time with my little man. He is six and loves to discover things. There other day we were outside playing and we found a praying mantis. He was very excited to catch and observe it. We let it go onto a bush that had some aphids on it. It was fun to watch the praying mantis feast on them. I wish I would have taken some pictures, but I was in the moment and I had no phone or camera nearby.

But when we came in, my son wanted to draw a picture of it. So of course he did. As he was doing that, the teacher in me thought it would be great to have some discovery sheets around for these types of moments. So here you go (click to grab yours)

I purposely made it generic so it could be used for various "discoveries." I thought at the end of the summer, I could staple them into a book for him to refer back to.

Wednesday, June 18, 2014

School is out here for us (finally) so now I feel like I can blog and create and stalk (I mean...read)!!! The last month of school is completely insane...busy with assessments, fun/field days, keeping the kids busy, you name it.

I know I teach the young ones and a lot of you teach older
students so I wanted to offer up something that all of us could use. Writing is
such a big focus and sometimes (ok, most days) our students sigh heavily when
you mention that it is time for writing.

Well since school will be starting back before we know it
(ahem…I try not to think of that…) what better way to get your students to
write than to write about what they did for summer vacation.

Brainstorm with your students about a particular vacation that
either you have been on, something they have done, or maybe a trip that someone
they know has taken. Discuss the Who, What, How, Why, and Where of this
particular trip.

If you teach in an area like I do, many of my students have
not and very possibly will never, go on vacation. So this activity can be done
like a research activity as well. Provide various places or have students
brainstorm places that they would LOVE to visit (Disney World, the beach, etc.)
Then have the students research these places and again answer the Who, What,
Why, How and Where questions.

I hope that you are able to use this freebie in your
classroom. I think writing is one of the most important concepts we need to
teach, but why keep it boring!

Tuesday, June 17, 2014

I know that is only June, but I can't help thinking about back to school time. It always sneaks up on me pretty fast so I plan on being ready this year.

One way I am getting ready is by preparing my All About Me book. I like to use this book at the beginning of the year so I can get to know my students and they can get to know each other.

It has simple text and blank space for the students to create their own pictures. Students just fill in the blank on each page. Some students at the beginning of the year just scribble and others are able to write some letters to complete the text. It doesn't matter, they each write what they can.

Once all my students have completed their book then we share the books with the class with my help, of course. I either read the words and the students tell about the pictures or I let the students try to read the words if they would like. The text is pretty simple so most of the students choose to read it themselves with a little guidance from me.

The students love getting to share their work with the class and it promotes a feeling of community within our classroom to see everyone's work and get to the know the class better.

If you would like to grab this book for FREE, just click {here} to download it. Please consider leaving feedback if you download the book.

Sunday, June 15, 2014

Happy Father's Day to the fathers out there. To all the girls out there-go and spoil your father (and your husband) today!

I've been trying to figure out what to blog about on here today and I couldn't come up with anything. I am totally not in school mode right. I am in vacation mode. So, instead I thought I would share a quick vacation freebie with you!

This list can help you pack for vacation (to somewhere sunny)! If you are going somewhere cold- this will not help you much!

Friday, June 13, 2014

Hey there! It's Angie from The First Grade Scoop here. Today was my LAST day with students! I honestly wondered if the day would ever come. We still have a few days next week for PD, but that is much more doable.

Today (well, this week) was a total whirlwind. We spent the day passing back papers, auctioning off anchor charts and other student giveaways, passing out old classroom library books for students to keep, and cleaning. We snuck in a couple Minute to Win It games as well. I think I had an exhausted group!

I am trying to prep as much as possible for next year so I don't end up with a mile-long to do list that's only half finished the night before school starts. (Please tell me I'm not the only one who does this.) As part of my attempts to get on top of things, I've overhauled my folder and notebook labels.

Am I the only one who struggles with formatting in Word sometimes? It is supergoofy at times. I LOVE using PowerPoint, but I wanted to make my labels printer-friendly and to print them on 2x4" and 3.3x4" labels (not an option in PowerPoint). When I tried making cutesy labels in Word, I could put a pic inside a frame. Ugh.

After a bit of frustration, I stumbled upon an EASY PEASY way to make cute labels in Word! Here's what to do:

Open PowerPoint, create a new presentation, and design the labels you'd like to have. I made my border a couple tenths of an inch smaller than the label. I put the picture and text box into the border. I did this for each type of label I made.

Then, I selected (just click and drag) the entire label I wanted. The border, picture, and text box for just that one label were all selected (like the little boxes were around each object). Then, I went to Arrange, and selected Group.

Once you do this, the border, picture, and text box become one single image.

Copy and paste this image into your labels in Word.

Occasionally, I had to slightly adjust font size and the size of the border, but all in all... A huge success! I was able to print these bad boys out on labels without problems!

(I'm thinking about making a bunch of these for a TPT file. Would anyone be interested? If so, let me know what types of notebooks and folders you use!)

I hope this tip helps you to easily make cute labels that are fast to print. Enjoy!

Thursday, June 12, 2014

Well hello there! It's been a couple of weeks into the summer for me here in Juneau, Alaska and I have to say...school is NOT on my mind! We just got back from a camping trip and after spending a ton of money on rain gear and the forecast being rain...it was sunny and beautiful! Which means I didn't spend any time writing a post for today...can I make it up to you though? How about a freebie for all of you Teaching Blog Roundup followers?!

Father's Day is this coming Sunday, and whether you're still teaching (don't worry, I'll probably be working in August when you're still on break), or maybe you have a few kids of your own that you're looking for something crafty to do with them, you might be able to use this Donuts with Dads craftivity! It will only be FREE for a limited time before it goes back to a priced item, so go grab it now and pretty please, leave me some feedback :)

Wednesday, June 11, 2014

I'm on summer break (and despite the cool temps and constant rain) I'm enjoying it so far. I can say my place hasn't been this tidy/organized since....well....I guess last summer, lol.

I attended some professional development opportunities this week and I thought I'd share one with you.

This past school year I heard about Weebly. It's a site where you can create a FREE webpage. I played around on it but nothing really developed, so I was excited to see one of the PD opportunities was to learn more about Weebly.

I want to develop a site for parents to visit to find out about what's going on in the classroom. I hope to keep on top of it and add weekly spelling, math, etc. You can even add files for them to download so permission slips, homework assignments, printable books, TpT products (that you have license to share), etc can be accessed from their homes. I am not sure how many parents will utilize it but I'm hoping it's one of those things that some parents use it this year then more next, and so on and so on until it snowballs and basically my whole class has access to it.

I created this video (it did get cut off BUT I just wanted to do an intro anyway) If you have any questions just leave a comment and I'll reply if I can.

Monday, June 9, 2014

Last month I shared a Mother's Day gift idea. Sadly, Father's Day is often forgotten in the classroom due to it taking place in June, usually after the school year has already ended (at least in my case). Here, schools are already out for the year, but I know that some of you still have a few days left. If so, here is a sweet and easy gift idea for Father's Day.

Every year I have my students make a book for their father/grandfather/uncle/etc. They write about things they do with their dad, why they love their dad so much, etc.

(This is how the Mother's Day books turn out!)

If you're interested in making these with your students, I've put together a
packet with instructions, graphic organizers, writing plan sheets, and a
fun fill-in-the-blank. Templates for dads, grandpas, and uncles are included (as well as moms, grandmas, and aunts...and a blank template too!)

Thursday, June 5, 2014

I've heard that federal agents are trained to recognize counterfeit currency by intensely studying the details of the real thing. The idea is that they'll know the real money so well that the counterfeit will be instantly recognizable to them. There are a million ways to counterfeit, but only one true way to make the actual bill.

Now, not being a federal agent :), I don't even know if this story is true. But being someone who's taught many years, I can tell you that the same principle applies in math. There are a million "counterfeit" answers that seem like the correct answer if you don't think hard about it, but there's only one correct answer. {Okay, that last bit is arguable, I suppose, but less frequently in math than in other areas, right? :) 5+5 will never be 11! }

That's the idea behind "Thumbs Up or Thumbs Down?" math games. With lots of practice, it gets to be easy to tell the counterfeit from the true facts. I've had this set of ten games for second grade at Teachers Pay Teachers and Teachers Notebook for a few months ...

Each grade level version has ten games, with each game focusing on a Common Core math standard for that grade. There's some great thinking involved, as students evaluate expressions that quite often look like the real thing, but after closer checking are just counterfeits!

The games are also fun to play. Your kiddos will love being silly when they say "Sorry, Charlie!", "No, Sir-ee!", or "You'd better believe it!" as they put their cards on their mats.

So, give me a "thumbs up" if you'd like a sample of the first grade set! This set of cards and sorting mat includes sample expressions from the other games in the set. It would be great to use as an end of year math center review game in first, or a "let's get those brains in gear again" game time at the beginning of second grade.

Just click on the picture to download your copy. Enjoy!

Thanks for stopping by Teaching Blog Roundup today. I'd love it if you'd stop by and visit me at Primary Inspiration. See you again here at TBR on the 5th of July!

Wednesday, June 4, 2014

Easy, Breezy Father's Day Gift He Will Love:

These make personalized notepads that turn out so cute because the students handwrite their dad's name at the top and sign the bottom. It's as easy as 1, 2, 3, oh and 4 too! :)

Just give each child one template (there are 2 on each page).

1. Have them write their dad's first name at the top. (I copy their dad's name from their emergency card.) *See note below for options. You can find the templates by clicking HERE.

Click the image to see the download.

2. You make copies of each child's template. (I glue 2 templates to a sheet of Xerox paper and run 20 copies.)

3. Cut the copies in half and staple each child's stack at the top with 2 staples to create a notepad.

4. Wrap in clear cellophane and tie with raffia for an elegant gift that the dads will LoVe and actually use! :)

* Options: If you have a student who does't have a dad or has someone else who is significant in their life, you can use one of the "significant other" options. There is also a blank so they can fill in whatever they want instead of "dad" like "uncle" or "mom".